Cellphone Victims and other Viral Stories

Chintan Girish Modi finds Sameer Kulavoor capturing the moulting social landscape.

- Chintan Girish Modi

A tiny detail in Sameer Kulavoor’s new paintings can become hugely engrossing and pull the viewer into an emotional universe that requires no curatorial roadmaps. All that is expected is a willingness to gaze at the self, not just the work on the wall.

Kulavoor’s new show You Are All Caught Up invites viewers to behold the compulsive human need to consume every morsel of image, text and sound to the point of exhaustion. Any relief from these digital entanglements is only temporary. It is shattered all too easily by the next notification.

Hosted by TARQ in Mumbai from the 3rd of December 2020 to the 7th of January 2021, this show is definitely not a visual rant by a misanthrope. The artist draws attention to his own participation in the digital economy where consumers are also producers. Being captive is an act of surrender.

The acrylic on canvas